Men’s soccer suffers winless week

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Story by Jim Joyner, Sports Editor

The men’s soccer team proved to be human this past week with a 1-1 draw on Wednesday night at Park and its first loss Friday night at home to Doane College 1-0. The men won their first five games of the season and the first four without conceding a goal.

On Wednesday night, Baker got off to a strong start with freshman Austin Halsey scoring his third goal of the season in the 6th minute. Halsey beat Park Pirate goalkeeper Lucas Vallilo to the near post after an assist from senior Andrew Meinking. Baker jumped out to a 1-0 lead with all the momentum early.

Baker led 1-0 at the half and outshot Park 6-3 but the Pirates were threatening with five corner kicks.

Twenty-three minutes into the second half Park scored the equalizer. Park’s Cyril Gadu found the back of the net with a header, beating sophomore goalkeeper Pat Rydberg.

At the end of the 90 minutes the game remained level at 1-1 and the teams went into extra time. But two 10-minute extra time periods found no winner and Baker didn’t win the game for the first time this season. Baker was still unbeaten with the draw and Park moved to 2-0-1.

Rydberg made five saves and Baker took 15 rips at the Park net with six on frame. Junior Julian Sansano led Baker with three shots.

Baker made a quick turnaround with a Friday night matchup with 3-2-0 Doane College from Crete, Nebraska. The Tigers, of the Great Plains Athletic Conference, were coming off of two losses on the west coast to Warner Pacific College of Portland, Oregon and the Evergreen State College of Olympia, Washington. The chance to rebound didn’t look likely against a strong Baker team.

Baker dominated throughout the duration of the game but couldn’t find the back of the net. Baker outshot Doane 15-6, took five more corner kicks and forced Doane’s keeper Casey Clark to make seven saves. But sometimes a win on paper just doesn’t correlate to the real win column.

Doane hung around and in the 87th minute, Zackry Stevenson put the Tigers ahead with the eventual game-winning goal. Doane held on for the final three minutes and the visitors gave Baker its first loss of the 2015 season.

This week Baker plays two games — the first at 6 p.m. on Tuesday at Hastings College in Hastings, Nebraska, and the second at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday at Central Methodist University in Fayette, Missouri.